GOSHEN - Less than a month after undergoing a liver transplant, Orange County Executive Ed Diana held a press conference Monday outside his office at the county Emergency Services Center to showcase his speedy recovery and his imminent return to work in the final weeks of his administration.

Applauded by a group of waiting county officials and legislators as he strode into his office suite, Diana told reporters that he has regained his strength sooner than expected and plans to resume full-time work within a week, with some limitations on his interactions and breaks for occasional fatigue in the meantime.

“I wanted you to see me,” he said. “I think I look pretty good.”

Providing new details about the circumstances of his transplant, Diana said he’d been called about an available liver at 11:15 on the night before he went into surgery in Manhattan. That call, it turned out, saved him a trip to Nashville, where he had been scheduled to fly to get on another transplant waiting list — on the very day he got his new liver.

He said he began talking as soon as he woke from surgery and found his energy and normal coloring instantly restored, after appearing jaundiced and feeling exhausted at times for more than a year before his surgery.

Diana said his liver donor was a 34-year-old Long Island resident, but he had no other information about the circumstances of the donation.

Asked about unsettled business before he leaves office on Dec. 31, Diana said that there’s a “very good chance” he’ll veto full-year funding for the county nursing home in 2014 and that he hopes to bond for Government Center renovations with an impending decision by the Legislature.